Alginate is a hydrogel commonly used for cell culture by ionically crosslinking in the presence of divalent Ca(2+) ions. However these alginate gels are mechanically unstable, not permitting their use as scaffolds to engineer robust biological bone, breast, cardiac or tumor tissues. This issue can be addressed via encapsulation of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) serving as a reinforcing p...

Although pellet culture and encapsulation of chondrocytes into gel-like biomaterials have lead to major advances in cartilage tissue engineering, a quantitative comparative characterization of cellular differentiation behavior during those cultivation procedures has not yet been performed. Our study therefore aimed at answering the following question: is the redifferentiation pathway of chondro...

The recombinant plasmid pAL-A3 bears a (poly ManA) alginate lyase-encoding gene that originates from the marine bacterium ATCC 433367 (Brown et al., Appl. Environ. Microbiol. (1991) 57, 1870-1872). The alginate lyase produced by Escherichia coli TC4 harbouring pAL-A3 was purified to protein homogeneity and the corresponding gene sequenced, giving access to the first known primary structure of a...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that causes a variety of infections in compromised patients. The ability of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to produce chronic infection is based in part on its ability to biosynthesis of biofilm, and alginate is the major polysaccharide in the synthesized biofilm. So alginate degradation is very essential in the dispersion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bi...

Background: Expansion and differentiation of stem cells relies on the soluble materials as well as the physical conditions of their microenvironment. Several methods have been studied in attempt to enhance the growth and differentiation rates of different adult stem cells extracted from different sources. Objectives: The purpose was to improve the three-dimensional (3D) culture condition of th...

Microbubble particles have been extensively utilized as temporal templates for various biomedical applications. This study proposes a facile strategy to obtain microbubble-containing alginate particles (i.e., microbubbles inside alginate gel particles, called alginate microbubbles). The chemical reaction of sodium bicarbonate and hydrogen peroxide to produce gaseous carbon dioxide and oxygen wa...

Aims: To investigate the effect of adding nanoparticles on compressive strength alginate impression material. Materials and Methods: In this study, two types were added to materials: silver zirconium oxide at four concentrations: 0.5 %, 1%, 2%, 5% by weight. Compressive was tested for 45 samples made according American Dental specification no.18 Results: The addition did not alter material, whe...

Alginate hydrogels have already been extensively used in cell encapsulation, but few investigations have been done to compare cell proliferation and drug response in different extracellular matrices. We previously developed a novel microfluidics approach for tumor spheroid generation and testing: a cellladen core-shell bead suitable for several days of culture, which contains growing spheroids ...

Grafting of microencapsulated pancreatic islets has been proposed as an alternative to exogenous insulin for the treatment type 1 diabetes mellitus. Microencapsulated are protected from direct contact with immune cells and larger immune-active molecules such immunoglobulins. Unfortunately, many islet in microcapsules lost immediate period after transplantation due early host response limiting l...

Calcium phosphate nanoparticles are suitable as scaffolds for bone regeneration; however, few reports on available calcium phosphate-based biomaterials with an antibacterial property drug carriers. Lei Nie and colleagues developed silver-doped biphasic phosphate/alginate microclusters using the double-emulsions method. The cover image shows SEM micrograph of prepared in which spherical shape su...